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Notes on the Qualities of a Successful Salesman

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Some of the important skills that a salesman must have to become a successful are as follows:

The perception of a salesperson is that of a slick, suave, fast talking confident trickster devoted to forcing unwanted products on innocent customers. This is unrealistic in a world of educated and knowledgeable customers in consumer markets and professional buyers in business markets.

Success in selling comes from implementing the concept of customer-orientation when face to face with consumers, not denying it at the very point when the seller and buyer come into contact. The sales interview offers an unparalleled opportunity to identify individual customer needs and match behaviour to the specific customer that is encountered.

High pressure selling tactics will not work when customers know precisely what they want, which is increasingly the case in both consumer and business markets. In fact, high pressure selling tactics will put off customers and may lead them to denying access to such salespeople.

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A salesperson will be successful when he combines reason and passion, i.e., combining the attitude to know customer needs and an internal motivation to make a sale. Success is associated with the following good practices.

1. Ask questions:

A good salesperson lets the customer talk. He asks questions to arrive at the real needs of the customers. A good salesperson listens intently. As he listens, he does not prepare his defence for his own product. He listens actively to unearth the motivations of the customer in making the purchase.

Most salespersons make the mistake of combining the two tasks of listening to the customer explaining his requirement and advocating their own product. The two tasks should be done separately at two stages. The salesperson should first listen to the customer and then advocate his product.

2. Provide product information, make comparisons and offer evidence to support claims:

Most salespersons feel proud of selling on pure rhetoric. It is not a good ploy when the customers are educated and informed, and are not hesitant about making comparisons. Salespersons should provide detailed product information and help the customer in making comparisons with competitors’ product.

Howsoever uncomfortable a salesperson may feel, he should allow and facilitate the customers to make comparisons in his presence so that he could provide clarification and influence his choice subtly.

A salesperson should not shy away from meeting a customer in presence of the salesperson of a competitor. It is an irrefutable fact that the customer is going to make comparisons before making a choice.

So it might as well happen sooner and in his presence so that, if the customer develops an opinion about his product which is not true, he will have the opportunity to counter it.

3. Acknowledge viewpoint of customers:

A customer’s needs arise out of his own particular state of being and operation. It is futile to find fault with his needs or wish that they were different just because the salesperson’s product does not meet the customer’s requirement.

It is best to acknowledge the customer’s needs as legitimate, and work to find a solution to his needs. Customers get agitated when salespersons deliberately misconstrue their requirements to fit with the benefits provided by the salesperson’s product.

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A customer’s perception is based on facts that he possesses about a product and competitors’ products. It is futile to fight with this perception. Instead the salesperson should provide new facts which challenge the facts that the customer has in possession.

The salesperson should focus on providing such facts which will help the customer in forming positive perceptions about the salesperson’s product.

4. Support the customer:

The customer should consider the salesperson as someone who will offer genuine advice and whose deeds will not be governed by his need to make a sale. The customer should believe that the salesperson will never sell him a wrong product, i.e., one which does not meet his requirements, deliberately.

It is important that a salesperson demonstrates his genuine concerns for the customer, for instance, by refusing to sell his own product and suggesting one of his competitor’s products as a good alternative, if it fits the customer’s requirements better. One lost sale makes a friend of a customer.

Even in times of extreme rationality, most customers prefer to buy from companies whose salespersons they trust. It is an irrefutable fact of business markets that executives buy from friends but the salesperson has to become a friend first.

5. Relieve tension:

Customers do not like to take decisions under duress. It is important that the customer is allowed to make his choice without the salesperson staring at him. The customer should not be put in a situation where he feels too embarrassed to decline the salesperson’s offer.

The customer should be allowed to exit gracefully from the negotiation process if he does not want to buy. If a salesperson senses that the customer is reluctant to place an order but feels embarrassed to say so because of the relationship with the salesperson, the salesperson should allow the customer to convey the decision at some later time by email.

Email is a good media to send uncomfortable messages. At no point in the selling process should the customer come to regard his relationship with the salesperson as a constraint in his ability to make a good decision.

Customers who start viewing their good relationship with a salesperson as an inability to say no to them will not further their relationship with such salespersons. This will be a huge loss to the salesperson. Good relationship with customers is good leverage in conditions where there is product parity but it should not be used as a plank to coerce a customer to buy a wrong product.